Beautiful Creatures(97)

“Door.” Lena spoke without looking up from an old Latin dictionary. Her bedroom door slammed shut, just as Boo reached the landing. He protested with a resentful bark. “Stay out of my room, Boo. We’re not doing anything. I’m about to start practicing.”

I stared at the door, surprised. Another lesson from Macon, I guessed. Lena didn’t even react, as if she’d done it a thousand times. It was like the stunt she had pulled on Reece and Aunt Del last night. I was starting to think the closer we got to her birthday, the more the Caster was coming out in the girl.

I was trying not to notice. But the more I tried, the more I noticed.

She looked over at me, rubbing my hands on my jeans. They still hurt. “What part about ‘you can’t touch it if you’re not a Caster’ are you not getting?”

“Right. That part.”

She opened a battered black case and pulled out her viola. “It’s almost five. I’ve got to start practicing or Uncle Macon will know when he gets up. He always knows.”

“What? Now?” She smiled and sat on a chair in the corner of her room. Adjusting the instrument with her chin, she picked up a long bow and set it to the strings. For a moment she didn’t move, and closed her eyes like we were at a philharmonic, instead of sitting in her bedroom. And then she began to play.

The music crawled up from her hands and out into the room, moving through the air like another one of her undiscovered powers. The sheer white curtains hanging at her window began to stir, and I heard the song— Sixteen moons, sixteen years,

The Claiming Moon, the hour nears,

In these pages Darkness clears,

Powers Bind what fire sears…

As I watched, Lena slid herself out of the chair and carefully placed her viola back where she had been sitting. She wasn’t playing it anymore, but the music was still pouring out of it. She leaned the bow against the chair, and sat down next to me on the floor.

Shh.

That’s practicing?

“Uncle M doesn’t seem to know the difference. And look—” She pointed over to the door, where I could see a shadow, and hear a rhythmic thump. Boo’s tail. “He likes it, and I like to have him in front of my door. Think of it as a sort of an anti-adult alarm system.” She had a point.

Lena knelt by the Book and picked it up easily in her hands. When she opened the pages again, we saw the same thing we had been staring at all day. Hundreds of Casts, careful lists written in English, Latin, Gaelic, and other languages I didn’t recognize, one composed of strange curling letters I had never seen before. The thin brown pages were fragile, almost translucent. The parchment was covered with dark brown ink, in an ancient and delicate script. At least I hoped it was ink.

She tapped her finger on the strange writing and handed me the Latin dictionary. “It’s not Latin. See for yourself.”

“I think its Gaelic. Have you ever seen anything like that before?” I pointed to the curling script.

“No. Maybe it’s some kind of old Caster language.”

“Too bad we don’t have a Caster dictionary.”

“We do, I mean, my uncle should. He has hundreds of Caster books, down in his library. It’s no Lunae Libri, but it probably has what we’re looking for.”

“How long do we have before he’s up?”

“Not long enough.”

I pulled the sleeve of my sweatshirt down over my palm and used the material to handle the Book, as if I was using one of Amma’s oven mitts. I flipped through the thin pages; they bent noisily under my touch as if they were made of dry leaves, instead of paper. “Does any of this mean anything to you?”

Lena shook her head. “In my family, before your Claiming you aren’t really allowed to know anything.” She pretended to pore over the pages. “In case you go Dark, I guess.” I knew enough to let it drop.

Page after page, there was nothing we could even begin to comprehend. There were pictures, some frightening, some beautiful. Creatures, symbols, animals—even the human-looking faces somehow managed to look anything but human in The Book of Moons. As far as I was concerned, it was like an encyclopedia from another planet.

Lena pulled the Book into her lap. “There’s so much I don’t know, and it’s all so—”

“Trippy?”

I leaned against her bed, looking at the ceiling. There were words everywhere, new words, and numbers. I could see the countdown, the numbers scribbled against the walls of her room as if it was a jail cell.

100, 78, 50…

How much longer would we be able to sit around like this? Lena’s birthday was getting closer, and her powers were already growing. What if she was right, and she grew into something unrecognizable, something so Dark she wouldn’t even know or care about me? I stared at the viola in the corner until I just didn’t want to see it anymore. I closed my eyes and listened to the Caster melody. And then I heard Lena’s voice— “… UNTIL THE DARKENING BRINGES THE TYME OF CLAYMING, AT THE SIXTEENTHE MOONE, WHEN

THE PERSON OF POWERE HAS THE FREEDOME OF WILLE & AGENCIE TO CASTE THE ETERNAL CHOICE, IN THE END OF DAYE, OR THE LASTE MOMENT OF THE LAST OURE, UNDER THE CLAYMING MOONE…”

We looked at each other.

“How did you just—” I looked over her shoulder.

She turned the page. “It’s English. These pages are written in English. Someone started to translate it, here in the back. See how the ink is a different color?” She was right.